Austin Neeabeohe Evans Amissah (3 October 1930 – 20 January 2001) was a Ghanaian lawyer, judge and academic.

Life

Amissah was born in

Accra Accra (; tw, Nkran; dag, Ankara; gaa, Ga or ''Gaga'') is the capital and largest city of Ghana, located on the southern coast at the Gulf of Guinea, which is part of the Atlantic Ocean. As of 2021 census, the Accra Metropolitan District, , ...

, Ghana on 3 October 1930. He studied at Jesus College, Oxford and was

called to the bar The call to the bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received "call to ...

as a member of

Lincoln's Inn The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of the four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. (The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn.) Lincoln ...

in 1955. He was

Director of Public Prosecutions The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) is the office or official charged with the prosecution of criminal offences in several criminal jurisdictions around the world. The title is used mainly in jurisdictions that are or have been members o ...

for Ghana from 1962 to 1966, then became a judge of the Court of Appeal from 1966 to 1976; he was seconded from this position to become a professor and Dean of the Law Faculty at the University of Ghana from 1969 to 1974 and chairman of the Ghana Law Reform Commission from 1969 to 1975. He was appointed Attorney General and Minister of Justice in 1979, and later became a judge of the Court of Appeal in Botswana from 1981 to 2001, including a period as President of the Court of Appeal. His writings included ''Criminal Procedure in Ghana'' (1982, winner of the

Noma Award The Noma Prizes were established by Shoichi Noma, or in his honor. More than one award is conventionally identified as the ''Noma Prize''. Noma was the former head of Kodansha, the Japanese publishing and bookselling company. Kodansha is Japan' ...

), ''The Contribution of Courts to Government: a West African view'' (1981) and ''Arbitration in Africa'' (1996). He died in London, where he had lived since 1982, on 20 January 2001.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Amissah, Austin 1930 births 2001 deaths 20th-century Ghanaian judges Alumni of Jesus College, Oxford Members of Lincoln's Inn Ghanaian legal scholars Academic staff of the University of Ghana Ghanaian judges on the courts of Botswana Attorneys General of Ghana 20th-century Ghanaian educators